When Clayton, Louisiana is having good weather, Stacey McGraw spends as much time as she can outside enjoying the sun. She’ll make sure the herbs she grows and dries to sell at local markets are looking good, and she’ll check in to see how her leafy greens, tomatoes, cucumbers and raspberries are doing. 

Without even looking, she knows there’s a pretty good chance the blackberries are just fine. It was their stubborn resilience that got her farming in the first place. 

“We had a few blackberries behind the house and we saw how they kept growing, even after mowing them down,” she said. “They just multiplied. They just kept coming back.”

McGraw admittedly wasn’t exactly keen to embrace the slower pace of life in the rural community of Clayton. She and her husband, Charlie, moved home to Concordia Parish in the late 90s after living in Dallas for about a decade. She really liked the feel of the big city. He longed for the country. After settling in, she realized the slower rhythm and close-knit community made Clayton a great place to raise a family.  

“Just being able to slow the pace down with your family and know everyone in the community, it makes a difference when you can touch bases and someone knows your child,” she said. 

McGraw and her husband “fell into” farming during COVID, after cutting back those blackberries. They knew the berries were tasty, but they quickly learned that they also had medicinal benefits. That’s when their gardening ambitions started growing. Together, and with the support of friends in the community, McGraw and her husband built that garden out.

“We decided to expand it. Now, we have five, 100-foot rows,” she said. “Once you start growing one food, you want to grow others. That’s how we got into more fresh produce.” 

What began with a few blackberry bushes has slowly grown into a small farm that supplies fresh produce to local markets and nearby schools. 

Now, McGraw divides her time between farming and hairstyling, a career she’s had for 30 years. She owns a salon in Clayton’s historic district and she dedicates three days a week to her clients. When she’s not at the salon, she manages the U-pick operation at the farm and she delivers produce to nearby schools.

Transporting fresh produce in an unrefrigerated farm truck wasn’t ideal, as the food was exposed to Louisiana’s notorious heat and humidity, limiting how far McGraw could sell her harvest. McGraw figured a refrigerated truck would help, so she applied for a Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure grant. That grant money, managed by USDA Rural Development, was made available by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in 2021. 

McGraw was unfamiliar with the grant process, which made applying tricky in the beginning. The grant she had applied for functioned as a reimbursement. So, if she was going to purchase the truck, she would need to front the money.

“I thought, ‘What? We’re going to have to go to the bank?’ That’s what I was planning to do,” she said. “But most banks are going to tie in an interest rate or a penalty for paying early. I was just trying to get the money right here so I could give it right back.”

It was during that time that McGraw connected with Communities Unlimited, a nonprofit economic development organization funded in part by USDA Rural Development grants. As a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), Communities Unlimited (CU) offered McGraw an alternate route through a bridge loan. 

A bridge loan is a short-term, secure financing option often used when buying a home. It’s designed to “bridge” the gap between purchasing a new property and selling an existing one. In this case, the bridge loan provided McGraw with the upfront money she needed to purchase a truck while waiting for reimbursement from her grant. 

The loan Communities Unlimited offered McGraw wasn’t weighted down with high rates and fees, which can often be barriers for smaller producers looking to scale. And with reimbursable grants, those barriers can seem insurmountable, particularly when the timetable for receiving the federal funds can be uncertain. 

With financing in place, she was able to purchase the truck and pay off the loan once the reimbursable grant was funded.

“It made a world of difference,” McGraw said.

She wasn’t the only one who benefited from the purchase of the truck. Her little farm has expanded over the years, adding jobs to the local economy and generating interest in healthy eating. This season, she will offer 12 farm share subscriptions. At the mere mention of it in passing, four slots were quickly reserved. 

“I’m just going to stay humble no matter what, but people are so excited,” she said. “When I talk to people, that’s how they approach me now, with a ‘What are you growing now?’ And I’m encouraging them. It’s like taking on a whole new role. It grew into something more than growing. It’s growing with a purpose.”